Big pines surrounded them, so large that a lot of their trunks were more than two feet in diameter. Pine needles formed a soft bed that you could sink your feet into. Ben put his fingers to his lips and whispered "shhhh". . There was more than one way to climb a hill and not fall. It was easier to traverse the hill at a 45 degree angle instead of going straight up. He didn't want them to make any sounds that could give away their position, even if it was stepping on and breaking a large twig. "The hole was dug out twenty years ago, and all the dirt carted off in dump trucks. Few people know that's its here. But the bears certainly do," Ben said. He expected they'd see a bear as soon as they crested the hill. He expected that a bear in all that garbage would not pay attention to them watching from afar. If you lived in this part of the Poconos you realized that if you strayed too far into the woods you could come upon a bear at any time. But to tourists, like the folks he was taking up, the sight of a bear was a tremendous novelty. That was why he was taking them to the dump. He'd shown some pictures around of some bears that he photographed from afar and now he was expected to lead people right to the bears. He sighed. This really was the fast-food generation. When they came up the country to visit, he could see first-hand the nervous energy, the superficiality and attention deficit that he himself must have had at one time. Their home, which was two miles west of Sagamore off Route 6, was actually part workshop. Ben did his handiwork there, refinishing furniture, caning, weaving chairs. The bear pictures he took were actually quite easy to get, he just stepped out into their backyard which was the beginning of a vast forest. The Bingay's hadn't always lived in the country. Thirty years earlier they'd still lived in the city. In June of 1941 when the Feil family moved into the house at 88-32 187 Place in Hollis, Queens, Florrie and Ben Bingay already had a house around the corner. Ben used to work for the train station, BMT line but "got sick from the stress and the smoke" so they moved up to the country and they found a new line of work, initially a chicken farm but later woodwork and antiques . On one particular Saturday in the summer of 1999, traffic couldn't have been any worse. Heading South to the beaches it was backed up for 20 miles, but Ben's visitors were headed north to the wilderness and there wasn't any traffic. They were thinking they were pretty lucky. They'd have to decide just how lucky they were after the bear expedition had ended. The kids had clamored for it and he was doing it to calm them now. "Show me the bears," they said, until he could take no more. Quietly puffing on that pipe of his, he'd have shown the kids anything, told them anything. But all they wanted to do were to see the bears and it bothered him the giddy way they asked, for they hardly seemed serious about it.. When they got to the woods the pipe was extinquished and he set some ground rules. Number one was quiet. Number two was also quiet, but also to follow his lead in order to determine just how to be when walking through a forest. Actually, there were ten rules and they were all the same: quiet, because nothing was so important when you did not want to not attract the attention of a hungry bear!